NYC Ferry, More Popular Than Expected, Scrambles to Meet Demand

When New York City took over ferry routes along the East River, using a new fleet of small boats, and lowering the fares, officials anticipated that weekend demand might be higher in the summer.

But the city underestimated just how much demand would outstrip supply, forcing it to charter two extra boats — each capable of carrying 400 people — to handle summer weekend crowds, at a cost of $485,000 for the summer, or about $60,000 per weekend.

City officials and the contractor operating the service, Hornblower, also decided to change an existing order for new boats. The original order called for 20 boats from two shipyards on the Gulf Coast, each of which can hold 149 passengers. Now the city has asked that three of the 20 boats be larger, outfitted with bigger engines and with a capacity to hold 250 passengers, officials said on Wednesday. Those boats would not be ready until next year.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has heralded the start of the ferry service, known as NYC Ferry, in multiple news conferences, lauding how it began ahead of schedule in May, presiding over the christening of a boat and taking a turn in the captain’s chair during a maiden voyage.

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One of the new ferries on Jamaica Bay in April, when a ceremonial first shuttle between Queens and Manhattan took place.CreditKarsten Moran for The New York Times

City Hall officials disputed the idea that the need to charter bigger boats six weeks into the operation of the new service — and to revise its order for new ones — reflected poor planning.

“We’re still accumulating the data at this stage,” said Wiley Norvell, a City Hall spokesman. “Some of this is going to be trial and error,” he added. “We’re not the subway. We don’t have 70 years of detailed ridership telling us how many trains to run after a Yankee game.”

But behind the scenes and on the shores, crowding problems were becoming evident in the early days of the service. Even before Memorial Day weekend, when crowds overwhelmed the service leaving disappointed would-be travelers stranded on the docks, it was clear to officials that the fleet of vessels may not be able to keep up with the demand.

“We have designed this system to make sense for ordinary ridership, not necessarily for every tourist who comes on Memorial Day,” James Patchett, the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, which oversees the city-funded ferry system, said during a news conference in late May. (The city replaced service on the East River that had been operated by BillyBey Ferry.)

But the weekends are not the only problem. On Wednesday morning, when they arrived at docks, many commuters trying to get from Queens to Manhattan found large crowds and ferries already full, a recurring problem according to some riders.

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Lines of passengers waiting for NYC Ferry service at Furman and Old Fulton Streets in Brooklyn in May.CreditMichelle V. Agins/The New York Times

“Lots of us are longtime users of the ferry, rely on it to go to work, bring our kids to day care,” one irate morning commuter who is 37 weeks pregnant, Stephanie Tremblay, posted in a Twitter message on Wednesday. “We have never experienced such bad service.”

The crowding may have been exacerbated by troubles on the No. 7 subway line, which sent commuters scrambling for another way to get to work, an increasingly common situation as the city’s subways are mired in failures and delays. The ferries were never contemplated as a replacement for subway service, Mr. Norvell said.

But the worst troubles for the new ferries have taken place on the weekends, and not just on the East River. A newly established route to Rockaway, Queens, was strained last weekend as beachgoers flocked to the system during an early season heat wave, creating service problems.

The two chartered boats — rented from New York Waterway, a rival of Hornblower’s — began operating last weekend along the East River route, from Wall Street to 34th Street, with stops in Brooklyn and Queens. The city secured their use through the end of September, according to Anthony Hogrebe, a spokesman for the Economic Development Corporation.

But the larger vessels will not be available to the city for three summer weekends. They are already booked for other purposes for two weekends in July and Labor Day weekend. Mr. Hogrebe said that for those weekends, the city would use smaller vessels “in greater numbers” and that inclement weather may dampen demand.

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A ferry heading to Rockaway in May. NYC Ferry service began ahead of schedule, but it has been unable to keep up with demand.CreditHilary Swift for The New York Times

The chartering and order change validated some criticism of the city’s plan to build and use smaller boats. In an op-ed article in Crain’s New York Business last year, Tom Fox, a veteran ferry operator, said that “the new boats being built are too small to service the East River on summer weekends, when the current operator uses 400-passenger ferries that are filled to capacity.”

Mr. Fox, who ran the New York Water Taxi service, was referring to the city-subsidized East River Ferry service that preceded NYC Ferry.

A spokesman for New York Waterway declined to comment on the situation. But Mr. Fox was less reticent.

“It’s very sad that the planning wasn’t done properly in the first place by professionals,” said Mr. Fox, who has been a vocal critic of the city’s ferry system. He said city officials have ended up trying to arrange charters when ferry boats are in extremely high demand.

“This is the peak of the season,” he said. “You don’t plan for these things in the middle of peak season.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: East River Ferry Scrambles To Meet Summer Demand. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe